Due to population growth, urbanization and the rising middle class, the world will need 45% more energy, 50% more food and 30% more water by 2030. Energy recovery from waste shall become increasingly important to combat resource scarcity, while addressing waste-related environmental challenges such as greenhouse gas emissions as well as the volume, and other environmental concerns of waste. Many cities and locations are drowning in waste, landfills are full and environmental hazards exists e.g. in the form of groundwater pollution.

Finland has a long tradition in utilizing waste in energy production. For decades, the waste and side streams in the forest industry have been successfully utilized in energy generation. Additionally, during the last few years, energy conversion and recycling of waste has displaced landfilling as the main form of municipal waste disposal. Today, in Finland even 99% of municipal solid waste is recovered either as energy or by material recycling. From the beginning of 2016 it has been banned to landfill organic waste, which has further increased the amounts of recycling and energy conversion.

Global pioneer in waste to energy

Finland is a global pioneer particularly in waste-based fuel production and technologies for power plants that utilize waste as feedstock. Finnish companies can provide solutions throughout the value chain from collecting and processing to energy production.

With waste-based fuel production and related technology, renewable diesel is produced from waste and residues ranging from used cooking oil and food waste to tall oil from pulp production and much more.

Additionally, Finnish companies have also been successful in exporting biogas plants to China, Thailand and Vietnam. The plants use biodegradable waste as a fuel, which means that the feedstock is typically sludge from forest industry, community waste or separately collected biowaste.

Besides fuel production, Finland has also produced leading technologies for power plants that utilize waste as feedstock. The plants typically use mixed waste from e.g. households, shops and industry to produce heat and electricity to neighboring cities and areas. There are solutions for large-scale concentrated units as well as for smaller-scale distributed units. Waste-to-energy solutions are strongly linked to Finnish competence in combined heat and power production (CHP).

Reliable, scalable and tested technology

Finnish companies provide reliable, scalable and tested technology in waste to energy. One of the specialties is the high efficiency with a wide range of alternative fuels - even with challenging fuel types. Well optimized processes and technologies for different waste-based raw materials and local conditions have resulted Finnish companies having first class waste-to-energy references from all over the world. Naturally, our technologies follow the very strict EU environmental regulations of minimal emissions.